Saturday, 2 June 2012

Diamond Jubilee Nails!

As you may (or may not) be aware, it's the Queen's diamond jubilee today! The celebrations are going on all through this weekend and not ending until Tuesday, to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 60 years on the throne. So, I thought it would be a great time to wear some truly British nail art. Of course, this had to be the Union Jack.

Being the diamond jubilee, glitter was a must, which inspired me to create the flag using glitter. Sammy at The Nailasaurus has been using glitter a lot in her posts lately, so I've been dying to give it a try.

The blue that I used was Barry M's "Navy".

The glitter that I used was some that I brought from Staples. It came from a pack of 6 different colours (blue, red, silver, purple/pink, green, gold). For all of this glitter, it cost £2.75, which I think is pretty good for the amount that you get in each pot! Each glitter flake is less than 1mm in diameter, so they're really really little (and get everywhere!).

To do this manicure, I first painted the accent nail with Barry M's "Navy". I found that if I painted all of the nails at the start, glitter would stick to those as well. Because of this, I focused on the accent and then after cleaning the glitter up, finished the rest of my nails. After letting Navy dry, I added a layer of clear polish and sprinkled blue glitter over the whole nail. Excess glitter was knocked into a plastic container and then poured back into the pot. After this, I added another layer of clear polish to keep the glitter in place. Then, I used a toothpick with a small amount of clear polish on it to pick up silver and do the white lines of the flag. I placed the silver glitter on whilst the layer of clear over the blue was wet/tacky. To make sure the glitter stuck, I added more clear where appropriate. I then repeated this for the red glitter.

I think that this worked pretty well, but more silver (or less red) could have been used. What do you think?

Have a fun Jubilee weekend (whether you're celebrating or not) and enjoy the long weekend!